Gardening don'ts

• ...FRANCES BENJAMIN JOHNSTON
.629 LEXINGTON AVENE

The Old Corner Book
Store, Inc.
Boston, - Mass.

GARDENING DON’TS

Thb Westminster Press
41 ia, Harrow Road, W.

s

Between Shade and Sunshine,

GARDENING

DON’TS

By M. C.

Coloured Frontispiece by Alswen Montgomerie
And Seventeen Photographs from a
Hampshire Garden

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

NEW YORK

London : Bickers & Son, Ltd

I 9 I 3

S&453.5

.Gr7

CH I

Dedicated to

‘A DESIGNING WOMAN’

‘ So many books, and such a
very, very little bit of Nature
in them ! ’

ffichard Jefferies,

D ON’T write a book on
Gardening. There are
already ....

This space is left for the figures !
7

Brick Walk

D ON’T, if you are not
already the owner of a
garden, neglect to become one
as soon as possible ! Many are
the joys — few the sorrows —
that it brings.

8

D ON’T kill the birds that
eat your fruit buds; you
can buy fruit — but not the
songs of birds in Spring.

N.B. — They eat insects too.

9

D ON’T talk much about
your garden when you
take friends round ; they come
to tell you about theirs.

IO

D ON’T, when invited to
inspect a friend’s horti-
cultural efforts, enlarge the
whole time on the beauties of
someone else’s garden that
they have never seen.

Leading to Lily Garden

D ON’T forget that in the
world of flowers, the
un-rehearsed effect is often the
most attractive, and the un-
invited guest sometimes as
welcome as her more formal
sisters.

12

D ON’T find a place in
your garden for any
plant because it has ‘ a neat
habit of growth,’ or because it
bears a ‘ showy ’ flower.

13

Croquet Lawn in Summer,

D ON’T be too tidy
destroy the weeds but
let the flowers riot a bit.
Who can be more untidy
than Dame Nature ?

S* •

D ON’T say to those who
come to see your garden:
‘ Ah, you should have been
here last week ; I have never
seen such a blaze of colour.
Now, of course, everything is
over ; ’ or (knowing they are
just going abroad), ‘ If you
could only come in a fort-
night’s time, I should really
have something lovely to
show you.’

15

Bowling Green with Wall

D ON’T, because you ad-
mire someone else’s
garden, try to make yours
exactly like it : no two women
can be charming in the same
way, and no two gardens !

D ON’T strain after effects;

I have seen gardens which
look almost as self-conscious
as an affected woman !

17

Steps to Rose Garden.

D

ON’T let fashion rule
you : if you love old-
time flowers, find a place for
them, and if you think a rose
should be sweet-smelling,

DON’T

be beguiled into buying the
very latest thing, with blooms
as big as a saucer, but scent-
less.

18

D ON’T, if you wish to
please a friend who has
designed a very artistic garden,
remark : ‘ How charmingly

rustic you have made it all.’

19

D ON’T, when you are
being shown a garden
more celebrated for its pic-
turesqueness than for the
spotless tidiness of its borders,
fix your eye on a flourishing
nettle, and ask your friend how
many gardeners she keeps !

20

C

D ON’T, if your neighbour
prides himself on the
beauty of the garden he has
made, tell him that the fine
trees he found there when
he came constitute its chief
!

beauty

Sundial— with Lilac and Tulips.

D ON’T, when you see a
border of flowers over
which many hours of patient
toil have been expended, fix
your attention exclusively on
a sun-dial in the middle of a
brick path and ask your hostess
if she is sure that it is set
correctly !

D ON’T brag about your
gardening exploits — it is
so dull for listeners, who don’t
want to hear about (even if
they believe in them) the
‘ masses and masses ’ of flowers
in your garden, or the enor-
mous height to which your
sweet- peas grow !

23

Apple Orchard,

D ON’T ‘buck’ about
the size of your daffo-
dils ; Nature and a bit of earth
did it all !

24

D ON’T try to make a
daffodil hedge. They
look so miserable standing
stiffly like soldiers ‘ at atten-
tion,’ instead of scattered
about in happy groups.

25

D ON’T (no matter how
much you may wish
them to grow there) put any
plants in a spot where they
will not be happy.

26

Rock Plants, “ Cottage Maids,” and Cherry

D ON’T forget the value
of a background for
your flowers. How lovely is
a grass bowling green, with
a little brick wall surrounding
it on three sides, at the foot
of which are daffodils and
scillas and their successors ;
while from the top of the wall
rock plants tumble : arabis

and aubretias, and, later, rock
roses, lythospermums, ver-
onica, and endless others.

27

D ON’T build your wall
of new, bright red bricks
and make it look like a rail-
way embankment !

28

D

A Wall in Springti

D ON’T think you have
tasted the real joy of
gardening till you* stand below
on the grass, working at your
wall rock garden — without
breaking your back!

29

D ON'T be too definite.

Where everything is cut
and dried, charm vanishes.

30

Steps to Brick Path.

D ON’T grumble if the
sun shines persistently
for two or three months, but
bless, praise, and enjoy the
novel sensation !

31

D ON’T be too depressed
when it rains incessantly
look over your seed cata-
logues, and remember how
good moisture is for your
neighbour’s roots !

32

SI i

D ON’T forget that your
garden is your own ;
there is nothing more depress-
ing than a ‘ gardener’s garden.’

33

D ON’T give him a free
hand with that weed-
killer, or you may miss the
many joys of the unexpected :
the self-sown double daisy on
the steps, the tiny fern grow-
ing in a chink of the wall, and
the self-invited pink anemone
peeping out of your path
between the bricks.

34

Madonna Lilies.

D ON’T neglect the attrac-
tions of a vista, either
ending in a culminating point,
or vague and mysterious, as in
a copse.

35

D ON’T ‘ pergle ’ reck-
lessly; or you may find
yourself with a long, mean-
dering something — meaning
nothing — and leading — no-
where !

36

E

D ON’T force a rock gar-
den into your scheme,
or include it, unless, in the
place you have chosen Nature
could conceivably, even in her
most eccentric mood, have
here flung down a heap of
heterogeneous stones !

37

Herbaceous Border.

D ON’T altogether banish
any colours from your
garden: Nature is very cath-
olic, and knows better than
you do.

38

D ON’T be frightened of
mixing colours: it is the
hard artificial shades that clash,
but very seldom the soft, melt-
ing ones of Nature.

39

D ON’T be narrow-minded.

Give your neighbour
a bit of that rare plant he
covets, even if there lurks

a tiny hope

that it won’t flourish quite as
well as it has done with you !

40

Laburnum Arches in Full Bloom

D ON’T forget the humble
plants in your garden ;
the wall-flowers, forget-me-
nots, scillas and others, which
can be lifted and forced gently,
just as well as lilacs and
azaleas, to brighten your
rooms in early Spring.

41

D ON’T fret over faults
and failures. No one
is clever enough to escape
making them, and very few
wise enough to accept and
learn from them.

42

D ON’T worry. ‘He who
is constantly worrying
takes as little comfort as if he
were on a bed of nettles.’

43

Roses

D ON’T prune your climb-
ing roses too drastically,
so that — like children perpet-
ually controlled and punished
— they lose all charm and
individuality.

44

F

D ON’T be so busy tidying
up and cutting off the
dead flowers, that you forget
to admire the living ones.

45

D ON’T, when you call at
a new house on a wind-
swept hill, where flowers re-
fuse to grow, forget to admire
the view.

46

D ON’T, on the other hand,
tell your friend, whose
garden nestles in a belt of
trees, that for your part you
cannot breathe except on the
top of a hill !

47

“ Marquis Ito.”

D ON’T keep too many
dogs ; they are bad
gardeners.

48

D ON’T have evergreens
in your garden because
they are evergreens ; a melan-
choly shrub is not less ugly
because it does not shed its
leaves in winter !

49

Bowling Green and Steps to Garden.

D ON’T, in wiring them
out, leave one rabbit in
your garden.*

*We did !

5 °

D ON’T buy a ready-made
rustic Summer House,
(stained and varnished and
lined — crowning abomination
— with pitch-pine), and set it
down in an old-world garden
am ong clipped yew hedges —
it has been done !

51

D ON’T forget those friends
in London who would
love a box of flowers.

5 2

G

D ON’T bound your am-
bition by the desire to
grow bigger and better plants
and flowers than your neigh-
bours, but try to make your
little corner of the world as
lovely as you can.

53

Pond — Forget-me-nots and Roses.

Finally

D ON’T banish charm and
mystery from your gar-
den, while you welcome those
dull companions — custom
and convention.

54

‘ How willingly would I
strew the path of all with
flowers ; how beautiful a
delight to make the world
joyous !

‘ The song should never be
silent 3 the dance never still ;
the laugh should sound like
water which runs for ever.’

Uffhard Jefferies.

55

■1

New York Botanical Garden Library

SB453.3.G7 C41 gen

Chappell. Marion/Gardening don’ts

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